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Monday, September 16, 2013

Uni Jetstream 4&1 ( and cupcakes!)

I had been a consistent believer in the fact that multi-pens were not for me. My rationale has always been that they generally do a lot of things mediocre and can't do anything well. And I have been through a ton of multi-pens. But- if there is one thing that can I do is to keep an open mind and accept possibility of change. That's exactly what happened in this case. Jetpens was awesome enough to send me this little Swiss army knife of pens to try out.

To be clear and fair...I spent about a week with this thing on my desk... and guess what? I kept reaching for it. If it were just a pen that gave me the options for 3 or 4 mediocre ballpoints with bad ink...I would be very "meh" about this. However, the good folks at Uni decided to add a .5 pencil and give it solid writing ballpoints.. Which was for me... a game changer. Or mind changer...

I know that manufacturers need to make the bodies of multi-pens slightly larger to accommodate all of the ink tubes inside and generally this bulk equals a flimsy body. Not in this case at all. I appreciate the size and the weight of this one. It's solid. No rattles.

I really like how the pencil mechanism is built into the clip. I know it sounds trivial but sometimes you have to look at a multi and turn it upside down or shake it or squint to see which actual color you are trying to get. But I could find the pencil portion of this without looking and the ink color markers are clear. There's also a REALLY satisfying clunk when you change colors.

I don't have anything serious to write here other than the fact that no cupcakes were hurt or destroyed in the process of this photo shoot. If they had icing on them it would have been a completely different story...however these were some of my favorite props to date.

Here's the other thing, 0.5 mm everywhere. Thank you again. I will take that option everyday. I just naturally prefer a smaller point. So.. what is right here?: Nice feel, nice 0.5 tip, perfect addition of a pencil and I am sort of giddy over this one. What's wrong? Nothing that I can come up with. The only thing that is really wrong is that this thing changed my mind on how I look at multi-pens. Like I needed another genre of pens to take my money.

The oil based ink is light and water resistant and really does flow nicely across the paper.

The clip had a little sticker on it letting me know that there was indeed a 0.5 pencil in here. Need to advance the lead? Just press down on the clip a little more. Easy. These come in a ton of flavor and styles, and if you are interested, head over to Jetpens and take a look. It could change your mind also, unless you already like multi's then well, have a cupcake and enjoy.

5 comments:

I have always liked multi-pens, but I was unimpressed with some of the fills available for them. I like really fine points, and those midget, early ballpoint refills were awful.

The pens that take the Coleto C refills, however, are generally both fun and very good. I've pretty much gone to gel pens anyway, so they suit me fine. One of the pen sites had a tutorial posted on hacking Coleto cartridges into Zebra Sarasa multi-pens. If I remember right, you pulled the colored part that extended out of the body out so you could shorten the Coleto refill by just a little bit using a razor blade, then reassembled it. Works great. How many more of these options are out there that we don't know about?

Nice review of a nice multi-pen. Interesting that JetPens seems to be the purveyor of choice. I am currently in Taiwan and JetPens generally sell its pens at 2 times Taiwan RETAIL. It would serve readers well if reviewers would provide them with an alternative vendor rather than referencing them into this high cost one. But I guess that is the trade off for providing so many reviewers with free pens to review.